Comment 1 for bug 295444

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and help to improve Ubuntu.

The -f argument to dpkg-reconfigure is ineffectual for libpam-runtime because -f only sets the debconf frontend used when calling the .config script for a package, and libpam-runtime doesn't use a .config script: it calls (and must call) pam-auth-update from the postinst.

To set the frontend used by pam-auth-update, you can run either of these commands:

DEBIAN_FRONTEND=editor dpkg-reconfigure libpam-runtime
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=editor pam-auth-update

Marking this report as invalid because the pam scripts are functioning as designed; if you believe dpkg-reconfigure's behavior is incorrect and that -f should be applied when invoking any of the maintainer scripts, this bug report should be reassigned to debconf.